Founder & CEO, Sherpaa

Well now we have a viable solution for expensive surgeries for the uninsured. It’s long but worth the read. I promise.

My favorite quote:

“My ears perked up when I heard the prices,” Douglas says, because the average annual health-care cost for Blue Ridge’s 2,000 or so aging employees had doubled to $9,500 in just five years. “Every time we made a move to control costs, the provider community” – read: doctors and hospitals – “would make a countermove to protect their revenue stream."

and

"Annual health-care spending in the United States has topped $2 trillion – about half from private sources, half from public coffers – to comprise a staggering 15% of GDP. That’s almost double the average of other developed countries (9%) and more than half of global spending overall. That figure will only keep climbing, perhaps exponentially, as 80 million baby boomers, the so-called silver tsunami, begin to reach old age over the next 25 years. Their needs alone could keep every doctor from Boston to Bangalore gainfully employed for half a century, and a shocking percentage lacks insurance (or any real guarantee that Medicare will still be around when they reach qualifying age). As Toral puts it, a little indelicately: "God forbid you have a family of four, earning $50,000 a year. You are fucked."